Brutal Legend (PS3)

 What can I say? This game was a complete hoot! Developed by Double Fine Productions and released in October of 2009 by Electronic Arts, Brutal Legend is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys clad in studded black leather and riding chromed out choppers while listening to Black Sabbath from back in the day.

The premise of the game is thus: the protagonist, a roadie from our time named Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black), gets sent back in time to a land where the titans of metal once ruled. However, things aren’t going quite so well for the humans in this far-flung past and this forces our hero to step in and make things right. Without giving any of the major plot points away, there is the love story plot, the past and future subplot, the hero’s origin subplot, and the on-going civil war plot – all of which is set to some of the best metal ever recorded.

The gameplay has several distinct aspects – there is the open world aspect where Eddie Riggs runs around on foot or in his tricked out hot-rod, the Druid Plow, there are all the side missions, and then there are the RTS battles. The open world game controls were done pretty well except that there is no jump button for Eddie when he is on foot and, at first, it was a bit tricky to control the car. The RTS controls were a bit confusing. I am very used to playing RTS (Real Time Strategy) games on the PC, but using a PS3 controller to do it while being tied to my army’s general (ie, Eddie Rigs) was a bit offputting for me. Other than that, the game mechanics and controls are all well polished.

The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal and includes some of the most notable songs (100+) by a veritable who’s who of metal (75 different artists/bands); including Anthrax, Anvil, Black Sabbath, Budgie, Judas Priest, Megadeath, Motorhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer, and even the cartoon metal band, Deathklok. The graphics make no attempt at realism (which I’m not a fan of anyway), and instead opt for a cartoony look and feel that fits the humor of the game extremely well. Still, the graphics hold up well, even cast in a toony light. The world environments are rich (except for the RTS staging areas, which are rather flat and empty – perhaps intentionally so), the creature models are all well rendered and the whole experience comes off as extremely well put together.

All told, Brutal Legend was a ton of fun! And while it only took me about ten hours to play the through the story, there were still plenty of side missions left to do, plus some downloadable content and the multiplayer mode that I didn’t even get a chance to look at (so many video games, so little time). Honestly, at some point, I want to go back in and find more of the things I missed the first time around, or maybe even up the difficulty level and play through it again while unlocking all the goodies. All told, I give Brutal Legend 9 out of 10 and highly recommend this game to anyone who loves metal, fantasy, and chopping up monsters with an axe.